In today’s environment, companies in Macon, Georgia count on reliable Internet access as the lifeblood of their company. All companies, large and small, need fast and reliable Internet access.

In the months and years ahead, people and businesses will become more reliant on access to the net.

From email messaging to information sharing, e-commerce to archiving data, and voice over IP to video conferencing, the web is omnipresent. What is the best solution for you? Is a cable modem sufficient? Is Metro Ethernet necessary? Would Gigabit Internet suffice? Does your Macon business need a 5 Meg Internet circuit, 10 Meg Internet access, a 50 Meg circuit, or a 100 Meg access to The Internet point?

Determining your Business Need for Internet Access

You must, before selecting a service, assess the actual needs of your business. Is the web primarily used for emailing or web surfing? Is it used for real-time data connection with cloud servers? Are you hosting the data in Macon that remote places rely upon?

What if your high-speed Internet is disrupted by an outage? What will happen to your business? What about the downtime that results? Can your business afford that? How much uptime is essential to your company? Before you buy anything, you must answer these questions.

Evaluating Different High-Speed Internet Solutions in Macon, Georgia

It is no secret that all companies need high-speed access to the internet. When choosing the right broadband for organization, you need to analyze and balance the costs and benefits. While you are likely to hear some service providers toss around terms such as:

Fastest Internet access

Corporate Internet

We provide broadband cable modems

Metropolitan-area Ethernet

Gigabit Internet services

Multiprotocol label switching, also known as MPLS

Point-to-point circuit protocol

Five megabyte Internet access circuit

Ten megabyte Internet access provided

Internet access- 50 megabytes

100 Meg Internet access circuits

Session Initiation Protocol/ Sip trunk

Direct or dedicated Internet access

… and that is only a few

… the real issue is understanding what capability and technical solutions best meet your needs.

Business access to The Internet for Surfing the Worldwide Web

For many, if not all, companies in Macon, Internet access is needed for at least some employees. It may be needed for company research, to order office supplies or other reasons.

Perhaps the size of your work force may determine the solution that best fits your needs. If you have a handful of employees, a 5 or 10 Meg Internet circuit may be adequate. You should consider more than that if you have more workers. Also keep in mind whether your workers need to access the web at the same time.

You may not need as much high-speed Internet access if your employees work primarily on an intranet system with limited graphics and video. On the other hand, if your company requires that its employees download many documents or images and videos, Internet speed becomes more important.

Are you regularly performing backups? When you do remote backups from every workstation, which you should, you must support multiple and simultaneous connections to the web in order to sync your backup data.

Do you use a file sharing service like Google drive or DropBox? When you save a file it is pushed to the cloud. Then it is synched to the computer or computers of someone else. You must have sufficient bandwidth if you are to successfully support every service including file sharing.

High-speed company access to The net like Metro Ethernet and gigabit Internet may be viable options for you depending on your location. These can usually be found in Macon in “lit buildings” that have already been wired. Installing high-speed Internet may not be as difficult and expensive as you think.

Unless you are bringing Metro Ethernet into a new building, it does not have to be an expensive proposition to connect it to a suite within a building. Also, securing high-speed access to The web using gigabit Internet or Metro Ethernet often takes less than 30 days, depending on its availability.

High-Speed Internet access Required for Hosting Applications

Does your company host its own servers? Does your company use the hosted servers to run data feeds, APIs or websites for offices or businesses located elsewhere? Maybe your business requires that dozens of satellite offices have access to a hosted application at your company main headquarters. Perhaps you are in retail and host the point of sale (POS) system for thousands of stores? Are you a law firm? Do you host data for three or more external sites?

Granting access to outsiders is necessary when you host data and programs at a central location. If the net connection is interrupted or fails, those people are unable to accomplish any work. Make sure that when you choose your intranet solution it is reliable enough to support your need for multiple and simultaneous connections for many different places.

An inexpensive 10 Meg circuit may be enough if you have one office that needs to surf the internet. A cable modem may also be sufficient in this situation. Company headquarters should have high-speed Internet access such as gigabit Ethernet, Metro Ethernet or some other high-speed dedicated circuit. All offer quick speed but they must also be able to support diverse and multiple connections. A cable modem would likely not provide the necessary support.

In many cases, installing an inexpensive cable modem comes at a price. You may save money on your monthly bill but the bandwidth you get must be shared among many people. The cable modem you subscribe to with the 30 Meg connections may not always reach those speeds, especially during the busiest or “peak” hours of the workday. Many cable operators can only deliver a certain amount of bandwidth in a community. The bandwidth branches off to the multiple buildings, offices and tenants within them. The 30-meg speed you are capped out sounds good but it is possible that you will never reach that speed during business hours. Will there be trouble if your expectation is set at 30 but you only get 8 or 10?

You can sign up for dedicated and guaranteed bandwidth from some providers. In this situation, you do not have to share bandwidth. The bandwidth is all yours and is fully allocated to the needs of your business. You should receive full capacity of your circuits during all hours. This is true even though you may have many buildings, businesses and tenants nearby.

You can receive guaranteed bandwidth with Metro Ethernet. You can receive it in increments of five, 10, 50 or one hundred megabyte circuits. With gigabit Internet providers, you can reach gigabit speeds in your office out to the web.

In these cases, the carriers deliver high-speed to the building in sufficient quantity that they can then split their circuit to various tenants while guaranteeing each tenant is receiving their contracted speeds.

Incorporating Redundancy Into Your High Speed Company Internet Circuits in Macon

Realistically, while some providers in Macon offer excellent Internet bandwidth products, it is possible for a circuit to go down. What can you do to minimize the chance that you will experience an outage of some kind?

Consider redundant circuits.

There are, in essence, two types of redundancy.

The first is where you get multiple circuits from one carrier. When there are problems with a physical line or a port or other failures, it can be helpful to have redundant circuits. However, if that carrier has a regional outage or physical line damaged outside of your building, both circuits may go down. While offering some protection, it is not without risk.

Circuit redundancy can also be achieved in the following way: Import circuits using two different and distinct providers. You may want your circuits to appear and act as if they are one and come from the same source. If so you can use IP address allocations and advanced routers to do so. However, despite appearances, they are actually very much separate and are redundant to each other. Diversity redundancy provides greater assurance, comfort and protection. You will still have a live, fully functioning carrier if one fails.

If you want to maximize redundancy in Macon, Georgia please consider the following question: Do the providers I am considering use the same physical geographic pathways? Alternatively stated, try to have your circuits enter the building on different sides from one another. The circuits would be established either underground or on telephone poles and would be set up in different directions and lead to different offices. In this way you have redundancy in different physical directions. If there is an event that causes a regional circuit problem, you have an alternative that is unaffected.

What Are the Costs Associated With Not Adequately Protecting Your Company High-Speed Internet access?

While access to The Internet is not free, it pales in comparison with the cost of not having reliable access to The web. Contemplate these scenarios:

Your office depends upon Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) for its phone service

Your business is on a cable modem and your carrier provides circuits to 20 other offices in your building. During the course of a regular work day, any or all of these other businesses might be performing massive file downloads. Tenants might be taking a large volume of calls or be regularly streaming video. As the amount of available bandwidth diminishes, what will happen to your phone calls? How will the caliber of the call be affected? Will you lose calls? Will they be full of static?

Your office may be the working center of an entire business enterprise. The kind of organization does not necessarily matter. You may be a law firm doing file sharing, an accounting practice sharing databases or a retailer operating a distributed point-of-sale system. All of your offices, whether you have 3 or 3, 000, rely on your primary Internet connection to successfully access data. What happens if your circuit goes down? Will it cause disastrous results of just annoy you a little bit? How much work, if any, can be done by your remote places? Process or take new orders? Dispense and receive data? Picking the right a solution can be difficult. Before doing so, be sure you fully understand your requirements. Maybe your software company runs a hosted solution. Maybe that hosted solution is used by hundreds of your customers. Maybe you offer a service that allows other systems use an application program interface (API) to talk to you to collect information and data. What if these other systems have difficulty connecting your servers? Multiple outages may annoy your customers.

The telephone system at your call center relies on VoIP

Your company is entirely Internet based. No calls can go out if your circuits fail. Calls coming in would be unanswerable. You might not even know people are trying to reach your office. Your organization is basically done with. While many of the most reputable call centers are already aware and using the advantages of redundancy, is it sufficiently meeting their needs? Are you really getting the dependable service you need form your providers? Are you using providers that are truly reliable? Is the quality of service sufficient? Are your calls clear and reliable?

The Correct High-Speed Organization Access Circuits for Your Macon Company: How to Choose

Obviously, there are a variety of choices. Your company budget and needs will play a large part in your decision-making. Essentially:

Your Small Business and Access to the Internet

You are probably not thinking about redundancy if you have a small business with a single location. In this case, you can probably get by with a single access to The net circuit of 5, 10 or 50 meg. For an office in a lit building, you may find that gigabit service or Metro Ethernet are affordable options for you. The availability of circuits and your location determine prices; speak with one of our engineers to learn what your best options are.

Medium Sized Company in One Location: Access to the Internet

You have a midsized company in Macon, Georgia; you will surely need higher-speed Internet. You have several choices. Consider the following: Gigabit Internet, Metro Ethernet or higher-speed Internet access circuits. Multiple circuits utilizing multiple providers would, ideally, provide you with maximum redundancy. Achieving this may cost extra but it won’t double your costs. For example, you may use 2 fifty meg circuits instead of 1 one hundred meg circuit. Again, costs vary. Availability also varies. Learn your options by speaking with one of our knowledgeable experts. We can help you determine what is available in your specific location.

Access to the net for the Mid-Sized Organization with Several Offices

Companies with multiple locations are most at risk for failure. Redundancy is crucial. Varied providers are optimal. You can minimize the risk of downtime at if you also have redundant equipment like routers or switches. As always, take a careful look and choose the right Ethernet access services, Metro Ethernet providers, gigabit Internet providers and other high-speed Internet access circuit providers. The right mix of carriers and services will help keep your business up and running as efficiently as possible.

Providers of services that rely on the web for their delivery, big corporate clients and enterprise customers

If you fall into this group, you must have Metro Ethernet, gigabit Internet circuits and point-to-point High-speed Internet circuits. Having redundant hardware as well as redundant circuits from different providers will ensure your needed uptime. You must have the bandwidth to withstand sharp increases in usage. Doing so will help protect you from slowdowns or interruptions. Your goal is to have hardware and circuits that are more than capable of providing support to a significant number of fast and simultaneous connections.

Free Internet Demand and Need Analysis

There is great risk of failing circuits or insufficient bandwidth. The right circuits must meet your demand while keeping you within your budget. You have to select the optimal combination of hardware and circuits, which is a daunting task.

We have engineers that will analyze your needs, look at your business requirements and develop an action plan for you… for free!You want your company to run smoothly. We will look at your current usage levels and demand levels and design a plan that meets your needs at a cost that makes sense for you.

Please call our office for an assessment appointment or click here to complete the contact form on the right side of the page. It can take less than 48 hours to complete your assessment.